It was a surprise gift. Although rain was forecasted, Saturday October 14th dawned breezy and cool with only a few fluffy clouds blowing across the sun. Fifteen Saugeen Nature members and guests met at Joanne Anderson’s home to learn all about mushrooms.
Joanne started by showing us a few mushrooms that she had collected beforehand to illustrate different characteristics that are important for identification. There were examples of gilled mushrooms, toothed mushrooms, and small fungi called puffballs which forcibly eject or ‘puff’ their spores when touched. There was a mushroom that smelled like irises, another that had gills going partway down its stem, and a Stinkhorn that grows from an ‘egg’.
Joanne then directed our attention to small installations she had placed on the forest floor to grow mushrooms in a controlled way. There were log sections stacked and tied together to grow mushrooms that prefer a hardwood, or softwood substrate. These will take a while to produce mushrooms because the fungus starts by consuming the wood and until the wood is starting to rot
(be consumed) there is no need for the fungus to produce the fruit that is a mushroom. There were also log-shaped substrates that looked like compressed sawdust mixed with other components. These would produce mushrooms more quickly. There was even a stump from a newly fallen tree that Joanne had infected with Shitake mushroom spores. She expects that it will take anywhere from 2 to 5 years for mushrooms to appear on this stump.
The group then travelled over to Allan Park where Joanne led us on a hunt for mushrooms in the wild. Because it was late in the season we learned that there would be fewer mushrooms to see than in say, September, which is a great month for finding mushrooms. Even so, we came across Chantarelles, Turkey Tail, Witches Butter, Bleeding Tooth Fungus, and Green Elf Cup which turns the wood that it has infected blue. We also saw Tinder Conk, Yellow Fairy Cups and Late Fall Polyphore.
